The document discusses the systematic destruction of Islamic cultural sites in Xinjiang, China. An estimated 16,000 mosques (65% of the total) have been destroyed or damaged since 2017 as part of government policies of cultural erasure and sinicization. This includes 8,500 mosques demolished and 7,550 damaged by removing Islamic architecture. Additionally, 30% of important Islamic sacred sites have been demolished and 28% damaged. The document analyzes satellite imagery showing the destruction and provides case studies of historic mosques being reduced in size or converted to other uses. It calls for international investigations and pressure on China to protect indigenous cultures and religious freedom as guaranteed by its constitution.

1. The disappearing mosques in
Xinjiang , China
SAVE THE HOUSE OF ALLAH IN
XINJIANG
Malaysia Consultative Council of Islamic
Organizations (MAPIM )

2. • Cultural erasure
• Tracing the destruction of Uyghur
and Islamic spaces in Xinjiang
• This report is supported by a companion
website, the Xinjiang Data Project

3. What is the problem?
• The Chinese Government has embarked on a
systematic and intentional campaign to rewrite
the cultural heritage of the Xinjiang Uyghur
Autonomous Region (XUAR).
• It’s seeking to erode and redefine the culture of
the Uyghurs and other Turkic-speaking
communities—stripping away any Islamic,
transnational or autonomous elements—in order
to render those indigenous cultural traditions
subservient to the ‘Chinese nation’.

4. • Estimated 16,000 mosques in Xinjiang (65% of
the total) have been destroyed or damaged as a
result of government policies, mostly since 2017.
• An estimated 8,500 have been demolished
outright, and, for the most part, the land on
which those razed mosques once sat remains
vacant.
• A further 30% of important Islamic sacred sites
(shrines, cemeteries and pilgrimage routes,
including many protected under Chinese law)
have been demolished across Xinjiang, mostly
since 2017, and an additional 28% have been
damaged or altered in some way.

5. • Many international organisations and foreign
governments have turned a blind eye. The
UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) and the
International Council on Monuments and
Sites (ICOMOS) have remained silent in the
face of mounting evidence of cultural
destruction in Xinjiang.
• Muslim-majority countries, in particular, have
failed to challenge the Chinese Government
over its efforts to domesticate, sinicise and
separate Uyghur culture from the wider
Islamic world.

6. • Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) has adopted a
more interventionist approach to nation
building along China’s ethnic periphery.
Indigenous non-Han cultures, which are
considered backward, uncivilised and now
potentially dangerous by CCP leaders,
must yield to the Han normative centre in
the name of an ostensibly unmarked
‘Chinese’ (中华) culture

7. • The deliberate erasure of tangible
elements of indigenous Uyghur and
Islamic culture in Xinjiang appears to be a
centrally driven yet locally implemented
policy, the ultimate aim of which is the
‘sinicisation’ (中国化) of indigenous
cultures, and ultimately, the complete
‘transformation’ (转化) of the Uyghur
community’s thoughts and behaviour.

8. Two new datasets recording:
• demolition of or damage to mosques; and
• demolition of or damage to important
religious–cultural sites, including shrines
(mazars), cemeteries and pilgrimage routes.
• With both the datasets, we sought to
compare the situation before and after early
2017, when the Chinese Government
embarked on its new campaign of repression
and ‘re-education’ across Xinjiang.

9. • Media and non-government organisation
reports have unearthed individual
examples of the deliberate destruction of
mosques and culturally significant sites in
recent years.4 Our analysis found that
such destruction is likely to be more
widespread than reported, and that an
estimated one in three mosques in
Xinjiang has been demolished, mostly
since 2017.

10. • This equates to roughly 8,450 mosques
(±4%) destroyed across Xinjiang, and a
further estimated 7,550 mosques (±3.95%)
have been damaged or ‘rectified’ to
remove Islamic-style architecture and
symbols. Cultural destruction often
masquerades as restoration or renovation
work in Xinjiang.

11. • Despite repeated claims that Xinjiang has
more than 24,000 mosques5 and that the
Chinese Government is ‘committed to
protecting its citizens’ freedom of religious
belief while respecting and protecting
religious cultures’,6 we estimate that there are
currently fewer than 15,500 mosques in
Xinjiang (including more than 7,500 that have
been damaged to some extent). This is the
lowest number since the Cultural Revolution,
when fewer than 3,000 mosques remained

12. Figure 1: The number of mosques in the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region since its
founding

13. • Mosques across Xinjiang were rebuilt
following the Cultural Revolution, and
some were significantly renovated
between 2012 and 2016, including by the
construction of Arab- and Islamic-style
domes and minarets. However,
immediately after, beginning in 2016,
government authorities embarked on a
systematic campaign to ‘rectify’ and in
many cases outright demolish mosques.

14. • Areas visited by large numbers of tourists
are an exception to this trend in the rest of
Xinjiang: in the regional capital, Urumqi,
and in the city of Kashgar, almost all
mosques remain structurally intact.
• Most of the sites where mosques were
demolished haven’t been rebuilt or
repurposed and remain vacant

15. • Besides mosques, Chinese Government
authorities have also desecrated important sacred
shrines, cemeteries and pilgrimage sites.
• Our data and analysis suggest that 30% of those
sacred sites have been demolished, mostly since
2017.
• An additional 27.8% have been damaged in some
way.
• In total, 17.4% of sites protected under Chinese
law have been destroyed, and 61.8% of
unprotected sites have been damaged or
destroyed.

16. Figure 3: The estimated number of mosques
destroyed or damaged in each prefecture of
the XUAR
Note: Red dots represent
the estimated number of
destroyed mosques,
orange represents the
estimated number of
damaged mosques. The
number written shows
these two combined. For
full details see Table
1. Source: ASPI ICPC

17. • In June 2015, Yang Weiwei, a researcher at the
official CCP school in the northern prefecture of Altay,
clearly articulated one of the perceived threats that
authorities believe mosques pose to social stability in
Xinjiang.14
• Without providing evidence, she asserted that ‘the
number of mosques in Xinjiang far exceeds the needs
of normal religious activities,’ and instead provide
venues for separatists and extremists to proselytise.
• The Islamic faith of Uyghurs in southern Xinjiang, she
claimed, is propelling society away from traditional
secularism towards conservatism, and
challenging CCP rule. ‘In southern Xinjiang, the
capacities of the party’s grassroot organs are
hampered, but the role of mosques [is] constantly
being strengthened,’ she warned.15

18. • Her report specifically recommended that
mosques be demolished, saying that only
one mosque should exist in each
administrative unit, that their design should
adhere to strict unified standards (implying
the removal of Islamic and Arab
architecture), and that their opening hours
should be limited to a single day every
week and holidays.16

19. • Xinjiang’s latest ‘mosque rectification’ (清
真寺整改) campaign, which was
conducted under the guise of improving
public services and safety, began in 2016
and gathered pace under the new Xinjiang
Party Secretary, Chen Quanguo.17 Local
authorities were responding in part to Xi
Jinping’s call for the ‘sinification’ (中国化)
and the ‘deradicalisation’ (去极端化) of
religion in Xinjiang.18

20. • Additionally, media reports suggest that a
number of mosques that remain physically
intact (and therefore would be classified as
undamaged in our dataset) have been
secularised or converted into commercial
or civic spaces, including cafe-bars19 and
even public toilets

21. • However, visitors to the region since 2017,
who saw several still-standing mosques and
spoke privately with ASPI, estimated that
roughly 75% of the mosques still standing
had either been padlocked shut and had no
worshippers visiting at key prayer times or
had been converted into other uses. A
separate recent visitor to Kashgar city told us
that ‘virtually all’ of the mosques in the ‘old
city’ had been closed and that a limited
number had been converted into cafes.

22. Figure 4: Four mosques in Northern Xinjiang, chosen
at random from our database, showing their structure
before renovation between 2012 and 2016

23. Figure 5: The same four mosques were significantly
renovated between 2012 and 2016; all showed
additions of a dome and two or four minarets

24. Figure 6: The same four mosque sites, showing that
three of them have been demolished entirely and that
the fourth had its dome and minarets removed by 2018

25. Figure 7: A mosque in Hotan’s Karakash
County, before and after 2017

26. Figure 8: A mosque in Bayingol’s Lopnur
(Yuli) County, before and after 2017

27. Figure 9: A mosque in Chochek’s
Shiho (Wusu) city, before and after
2017

28. Case study:
•The demolition and
miniaturisation of
Kargilik’s Grand
Mosque (built in
1540)

29. Figure 11: Kargilik’s Grand Mosque
gatehouse as it appeared in the late 20th
century

30. Figure 12: Kargilik’s Grand
Mosque gatehouse in the 2010s

31. Figure 13: Kargilik’s Grand
Mosque gatehouse in September
2018

32. • Following the crackdown, most of the mosaic
artwork was painted over, the Arabic writing was
removed, the crescent moon motif was removed
or replaced, and a large government propaganda
banner hung from the mosque. Figure 13 is a
photo taken in September 2018 by a visiting
tourist, shortly before the gatehouse was razed.
The mosque has a large red banner saying ‘Love
the party, love the country’ draped across the
building and a sign where the Shahada used to sit
saying that CCP members, government
employees and students are prohibited from
praying in the mosque, including during the Eid
festival. Furthermore, the doors were also closed
and seemingly padlocked.

33. • Shortly after this photo was taken, the
historic entranceway was demolished. By
April 2019, it had been poorly
reconstructed at roughly a quarter the
original size (figures 14 and 15). Originally,
the entranceway was roughly 22 metres
across; the reconstruction is only 6 metres
across. Much of the original site has been
replaced by construction for a new
shopping mall.

34. Figure 14: Kargilik’s Grand Mosque
gatehouse rebuilt at a smaller scale in
2019

37. Symbols above the entrance to the Yuehai
Great Mosque are being removed

38. The dome of a mosque in Jilin’s Linjiang city
was converted into a traditional Chinese
pavilion

39. Video

40. Islamic Schools Shuttered, 100,000 Qurans Burned
03/30/2020MA XIAGU |
Two schools offering classes to learn Arabic and study the Quran were closed last yea
amid the CCP’s accelerating campaign to eradicate Muslim culture and faith.

44. The Zhongshahai Arabic Language School after its
signboard and the crescent moon and star
symbols were removed

45. Mosques ‘Sinicized’ in Ningxia Region, Jilin and Henan Provinces
08/07/2020MA XIAGU |
With the ease of pandemic restrictions, the CCP intensifies its
mosque “sinicization” campaign in areas inhabited by Hui Muslims.

46. Figure 16: The rates of damage to the various
sacred and significant cultural sites surveyed
in this report, by level of of protection

47. • Several of the most well-known and culturally
significant sites, such as Imam Jafar Sadiq Mazar
and Imam Asim Mazar, and potentially Ordam
Mazar, that previously hosted major annual
pilgrimages are offered no formal protection and
have all been demolished by Chinese authorities
since 2017.29
• In many cases where significant graves remain,
satellite imagery reveals that attached mosques
and prayer halls have been demolished,
apparently to deny access to and space for
worshippers. Additionally, in many cases otherwise
undamaged sites appear to have installed security
checkpoints at the entrances or have been fully
enclosed by walls, restricting access.

48. What is the demand?
• The Chinese Government must abide by Article 4
of China’s Constitution.
• Allow the indigenous communities of Xinjiang to
preserve their own cultural heritage and uphold
the freedom of religious belief outlined in Article
36.
• Must abide by the autonomous rights of minority
communities to protect their own cultural
heritage under the 1984 Law on Regional Ethnic
Autonomy.

49. • UNESCO and ICOMOS should immediately
investigate the state of Uyghur and Islamic
cultural heritage in Xinjiang.
• Governments throughout the world must
speak out and pressure the Chinese
Government to end its campaign of cultural
erasure in Xinjiang, and consider sanctions or
even the boycotting of major cultural events
held in China, including sporting events such
as the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

50. • The UN must act on the September 2020
recommendation by a global coalition of
321 civil society groups from 60 countries to
urgently create an independent international
mechanism to address the Chinese
Government’s human rights violations,
including in Xinjiang

51. WORLD MUSLIMS MUST RISE
• Demand OIC to pressure China CCP government
stop the atrocities on mosques in China.
• All Muslim state leaders must demand that the
destruction of mosques in China must be halted.
• The functions of all mosques must be resumed
and the religious practices of Chinese Muslims in
the mosques must be respected and protected.
• All world mosques must stand in solidarity with
Muslims in China to protect every religious sites ;
mosques , shrines and cemeteries.